just about as fast as it could be pumped out. We had to work give us the idea that we had no claim, strictly speaking, to night and day at the pump to keep the fire going. We could existence in any form, but that he tolerated us. He sent for us, not stand this, and in our extremity moved the iron stove, 2 feet kept us waiting for hours, and then either dismissed us without 9 inches high and 18 inches square, into the middle of the plant-convicts. In my subordinate capacity I was only honoured with an interview or gave us orders as though he gave out oakum to house. We commenced fires; many plants of tropical Ferns, two brief conversations, during which he was pleased to address Gesneras, Poinsettias, and the usual occupants of a hothouse me (for he never remembered names), as Mr. Cutts and Rowbeing within 3 feet of the stove. Water was of course kept in bottom, appellations which belonged respectively to the stud the evaporating pan, otherwise the extreme heat must have groom and an under keeper, but which were as unlike Oldacre been very deleterious. As it is, not a leaf has suffered; not as I daresay he wished them to be. We servants were not the the frond of a Fern nor the texture of a flower has been affected only ones who shivered in his icy presence, and winked and or changed in any way, but everything is as healthy as it could capered with exuberant joy as soon as we were fairly out of it. have been under the usual hot-water mode of heating. Living at the time in one of the lodges, I frequently witnessed the arrival and departure of certain county families who were annually distinguished by an invitation to the castle. To open pression of complete despair was like being hall porter at a the gates for these favoured guests and to look upon their exdentist's. They might have been bluebottles who had just set foot within the meshes of a spider's net, or rabbits helplessly mesmerised by a weasel. One footman, I remember, was wont to weep in the rumble, and to assume for my edification such an aspect of pretended woe, pointing the while with his thumb to the unconscious tenantry of the chariot below, that at last I dared not go out to meet him, and he was compelled to dismount and clear the way for himself." The stove has done duty three weeks, and has frequently been put on full power. The pipe is conducted through a square of glass in the roof. It has not been an object of ornament, but its usefulness has made it even good-looking in my eyes, and I really do not know what we should have done without it. It has given me too, in a very emphatic manner, further and striking proof of its economy. In this respect I feel certain that no other mode of heating can equal it. I will, on a future day, give something more than a general expression of opinion on this point, as I have weighed the coke it has consumed, and tabulated the mean temperature of the house and also the out-door temperature during the time the stove has been used. The water has now subsided, and we commenced heating in the usual way-hot water. I now intend weighing the fuel and recording temperatures as above for a given time, when I shall come at the real difference in cost of the two modes of heating, and I prognosticate that the figures of comparison will startle somebody.-J. W., Lincoln. NEW BOOK. The Six of Spades. (Second Notice.) In continuing our notice of "The Six of Spades," we turn next to the lectures which the members of the club, each in his turn, deliver during the winter sittings. The first is by the President, and is called "Rosa Bonheur." If anyone, however, expects to find anything about the celebrated French artiste who is so well known to us as having painted the lifelike picture of the "Horse Fair," he is much mistaken. The President tells us he has "only borrowed her sweet name to serve as a text and a motto. Rosa Bonheur-Rose est Bonheur. The Rose is happiness, Félicité Perpetuelle; a thing of beauty and of joy for ever." The lecture begins by taking us back to the days of childhood, and its happy memories connected with the wild Roses in the country lanes, before the hedges were close-trimmed and shorn of their wild luxuriance; and then he turns to the earliest memories of garden Roses, and dilates, as he may well do, on the glories of the old Provence. "That elegant individual," he says, "who first called this blushing beauty old Cabbage' ought to have been imprisoned for treason against the queen of flowers, and his diet restricted scrupulously to the humble esculent in question." And yet we doubt whether any treason was intended, and still more if the name were changed to the Provence whether many would associate it with the old Cabbage of their younger days. We will not, however, dwell longer on the President's lecture, and much prefer advising those of our readers who have not yet our author's work, Book about Roses," to get that work and read at greater length what in our opinion he has much better expressed there in a book which ought to be in every gardener's hands and in every true Rose-lover's library. The very fact, indeed, of the President having already written a larger work on Roses has cramped him in the lecture with which he opens the debates of "The Six of Spades," and he dwells much more on the early incidents of his life connected with Roses, and the manner in which he was converted from his allegiance to Pomona to be a worshipper of the Goddess Flora, than he does upon the culture of the Rose at present. Mr. Oldacre is the next person called upon by the President to deliver his sentiments, and those who have read the book will most probably agree with us that his story is of the sentimental order a romance in high life, in short. It appears that the great Oldacre served under three Dukes, and that the second of that ilk was of that species-a rare species, we hope now fast dying out-who thought himself too grand for this earth he trod on. We extract the following "So the Duke played at being an idol, and we performed the worshipping. He thought himself something more than human I am sure, and received our most lowly obeisance, as though he were upon a golden throne. His demeanour was calculated to However, in spite of the terrors of this haughty Duke he proved himself human as others before and after him have, and condescended to marry. One touch of nature makes all the world a-kin, though the honest Oldacre wonders" How he ever remembered her name, or brought himself to proffer those little tendernesses which are usual upon these occasions." However, the coldness and chill of the Duke's manners and ways proved too much for the woman he had wooed and won. Wooed, did we say? won it ought to have been, perhaps won by the title and the position. In six years after her marriage-day she was borne to the grave. There were, however, three children left behind to deplore her loss, and one of them, "the Lady Alice," is the heroine of the great Oldacre's story. However, we must be brief. My Lady Alice had two suitors, the one the favoured of her choice, a brother officer of her life-guardsman brother; but, alas! rejected by the paternal Duke as not being titled enough, or rich enough to mate with so highborn a lady; the other, a friend of her elder brother, and forced upon her against her will. What was the sequel? Oldacre in the conservatory attached to the house overhears, while a grand ball was going on and the conservatory was used as a promenade ground, a conversation which passed between the Lady Alice and her life-guardsman (though why Oldacre should have been there among the plants we cannot quite discover, as it is not a usual thing for an under gardener to be put in charge of a conservatory during a ball), in which the life-guardsman presses his suit and hears the fatal answer "I believe I am engaged to the Viscount." It ends by his plucking a leaf from an Orange tree and giving it to her with these words, "If ever there is hope for me, or I can help you, send me this leaf." On this leaf, as our readers may now guess, hangs the rest of the story. The wedding guests arrive, the sumptuous entertainment is prepared, the ducal chapel is decked-out for the fair bride; but the fair bride was not to be found; the fatal leaf had done its bidding, and early on the bridal morning the life-guardsman had carried off his true love from the destined bridegroom. We will not pursue the romance, we have already dwelt too long upon it. The story would dress up well, we think, in a three-volumed novel with an entrancing cover, and we recommend it to some of those ladies fair who satiate the popular taste for that delightful literature. The next lecture is one of Mr. Chiswick's " on bedding-out," one which our readers will see belongs more legitimately to a gardening work. Mr. Chiswick's chapter on bedding-out is a happy mixture of condemnation of the existing system and praise for it where it succeeds. It reminds one of the old saying, "Nothing succeeds like success." So much has been said lately on this vexed question of bedding-out, that we do not wish to enter much upon the discussion raised. Some gardeners think it right now to join in the onslaught of a certain knot of critics, who profess to lay down the law, and affirm that planting gardens in geometrical patterns of gaudy flowers is contrary to the laws of good taste. Mr. Chiswick does not go so far as this: we think wisely. He will even condescend to admire the terrace garden attached to lordly mansions. He says "Where shall we find, for example, a more pleasing conformity than in the tasteful bedding-out of those terrace gardens which surround so many of our great castles and mansions, and in which architecture and horticulture are combined in such graceful un son? The stone walls, and balustrades, and edgings of beds contrasting so effectively with the bright colours of leaf and flower, and this, moreover, for eight months in the yearfrom March to October, if the gardener be an artist, with means and men to realise his art, and to maintain in continuous beauty that bright mosaic basement. What, on the other hand, is more dreary and wasteful than a small garden, treeless and flowerless, for two-thirds of the year? A garden, did I say? A grass plot the rather, diversified by patches of brown earth, the work, it might be, of a school of moles who were studying geometry beneath." Now, it is very easy to make this contrast between the efforts of the mighty Oldacre and those of the inferior Grundy, but we fail to see why the proprietors of small gardens may not with their own good taste and skill make as much of their small gardens in their way, as these more ambitious efforts around the ducal mansions. In fact, our own experience rather helps to confirm us in the opinion that smaller amateurs often beat the lordly domains, and that more mistakes are made in bedding-out in large gardens than small, owing to plants being reckoned by their numbers instead of their worth. However, it is a wide question, and after all is a matter of taste, and we think everyone should be at liberty to please himself in what he does with his own garden. Our author is far too great a lover of flowers to totally condemn a system which has done so much to make gardening popular, and no one can contrast the gardens of the present day with those some twentyfive years ago, and wish to return to the old régime. One thing we cannot agree with our author in, and that is his preference of foliaged plants, variegated and otherwise, to flowers, although we may say of many flowers, "Eheu! quam fugaces." Yet all the charm of a flower garden is done away with when it is made to depend too much on mere foliage. The diversity of form and colour in flowers, and their very capriciousness, add much to the interest of a garden; and is a rosery necessarily an ugly and uninteresting object in winter and spring because its flowers have not yet expanded? We fear if a garden were only to be reckoned by the time it lasts in full beauty, a rosery would have a poor chance. We have dwelt so long on the Lady Alice and bedding-out that we must not say anything concerning the other lectures of the different members of the club. Suffice it to say, Mr. Evans gives us his experiences as to shows; Mr. Grundy sings us a song; and the Curate ends with a moral essay on the happiness of a garden. Mr. Evans on shows and showing is well worth reading, and the manner in which many a show is started is amusingly told. We may, in conclusion, recommend the whole book to the attention of our readers, as one which will afford them much amusement on a winter's night, though as we stated at the beginning of this notice, it is not of a deep or recondite nature, which would lead them to dissect a flower and tell us how many stamens and pistils it possesses, and what is the form of the ovary, &c. It is written by one who really loves flowers, and wishes to lead others to worship at the same shrine, and we wish the book success. IDENTITY OF AMERICAN AND JAPANESE PLANTS. PROFESSOR GRAY, in his address at Dubuque, gives the following curious facts:-Our Rhus Toxicodendron, or Poison Ivy, is exactly repeated in Japan, but is found in no other part of the world, although a species like it abounds in California. Our other species of Rhus (R. venenata), commonly called Poison Dogwood, is in no ways represented in Western America, but has so close an alliance in Japan that the two were taken for the same by Thunberg and Linnæus, who called them both R. vernix. Our northern Fox Grape, Vitis Labrusca, is wholly confined to the Atlantic States, except that it reappears in Japan and that region; Wistaria was named for a woody leguminous climber, with showy blossoms, native of the middle Atlantic States. The other species, which we prize so highly in cultivation, W. sinensis, is from China, as the name indicates, or, perhaps, only from Japan, where it is certainly indigenous. Our yellow wood (Cladrastis) inhabits a very limited district of the Alleghanies. Its only and very near relative (Maackia) is in Mantchooria. The Hydrangeas have some species in our Alleghany region. All the rest belong to the Chinese-Japanese region and its continuation westward. The same may be said of the Syringas (Philadelphus), except that there are one or two nearly the same in California and Oregon. Our Blue Chote is confined to the woods of the Atlantic States, but has been lately discovered in Japan. A peculiar relative of it, confined to the higher Alleghanies, is also repeated in Japan, with a slight difference, so that it may be largely distinguished sonia) of the Alleghany region alone. A second species has as another species. Another relative is our Turn-leaf (Jefferlately turned up in Mantchooria; a relative of this is Podophyllum, our Mandrake, a common inhabitant of the Atlantic United States, but found nowhere else. There is one other species of it, and that is in the Himalayas. Here are four most peculiar genera of one family, each of a single species in the Atlantic United States, which are duplicated on the other side of the world, either in identical species or in analogous species, while nothing else of the kind is known in any other part of the world. I ought not to omit Ginseng, the root so prized by the Chinese, and which they obtained from their northern provinces and Mantchooria. We have it also from Corea and Northern Japan. The Jesuit Fathers identified the plant in Canada, and the Atlantic States bought it in the Chinese name, by which we know it, and established the trade in it, which was for many years most profitable. The exportation of Ginseng to China has, probably, not yet entirely ceased. Whether the north-eastern Asiatic and the Atlantic American Ginsengs are exactly of the same species or not is somewhat uncertain, but they are hardly, if at all, distinguishable. There is a shrub, Ellittia [?], which is so rare and local that it is known at only two stations on the Savannah river in Georgia. It is of peculiar structure, and was without near relatives until one was lately discovered in Japan (in Triwitalavia) so like it as hardly to be distinguishable, except by having part of the blossom in threes instead of fours. We suppose Ellittia had happened to be collected only once, a good while ago, and all knowledge of the limited and secluded locality was lost; and meanwhile the Japanese form came to be known. Such a case would be paralleled with an actual one. A specimen of a peculiar plant was detected in the herbarium of the elder Michaux, who collected it (as his autograph ticket shows) somewhere in the high Alleghany mountains, more than eighty years ago. No one has seen the living plant since, or knows where to find it, if haply it still flourishes in some secluded spot. At length it is found in Japan; and I had the satisfaction of making the identification. One other relative is also shown in Japan; and another has just been detected in Thibet. Whether the Japanese and the Alleghanian plants are exactly the same or not, it needs complete specimens of the two to settle. So far as we know they are just alike. And even if some difference came to be known between them, it would not appreciably alter the question as to how such a result came to pass.-(American Paper.) May June July KINCARDINESHIRE. Inches. 4.5 August 7.5 September 2.4 October.. 2.3 November.. 2.6 December Inches. 2.5 4.0 3.6 5.8 5.5 48.9 The rainfall for 1872 exceeds the average for the last thirty years by 14.9 inches. Greatest fall in one day, 4 inches on February 25th. NOTES AND GLEANINGS. Ir will, no doubt, interest our readers to hear that Mr. CARMICHAEL, gardener to the Prince of Wales at Sandringham, is to succeed Mr. Donald, who recently died, at Hampton Court Palace. Mr. Penny, formerly of St. Dunstan's, Regent's Park, will occupy the post vacated by Mr. Carmichael. WHILST England and the northern part of France are being deluged with rain, the southern quarters of the latter country bordering upon the Mediterranean are completely parched-up in consequence of not having had any rain for two months. WIRE FENCING. UNLESS made of strong rods, iron fencing is so liable to injury and unsightly bending that we have more than once known it to be abandoned. Wire we have known similarly given up, and for the like reasons, and we therefore prominently notice Messrs. F. Morton & Co.'s "Patent Suspension Winder," because it remedies the objection. If the wires, either by accident or other causes, become relaxed, this "winder" with ease tightens the wire, and removes the unsightly curves, and its principle is shown in these two drawings. THE HISTORY AND CULTURE OF THE PINE APPLE IN ENGLAND. FEW of our readers are aware that Dorney Court, about two miles from Eton, is the birthplace of the first Pine Apple ripened in England. One of the worst of women, and one of the best of gardeners, ministered to its production. Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, one of Charles II.'s concubines, had for her first husband Roger Palmer, and resided occasionally at Dorney Court, then and now the seat of the Palmer family. Her gardener was John Rose, who had then no equal in horticultural skill; even Evelyn, his contemporary, says of him, "He reasoned pertinently upon all things which concern his hortulan profession," and London, his pupil, bears similar testimony. must have been between the years 1665 and 1672, for in the The birthtime of the Pine Apple to which we have referred year first named Rose was gardener to the Earl of Essex at Essex House in the Strand, and in the other year named he was gardener to the King at St. James's. The fruit of the Pine Apple had been made known in England in 1657, for an embassage returning to this country from China in that year appears to have brought Pine Apples thence as a present to Oliver Cromwell. John Nieuhoff, who was secretary to the embassy, describes the fruit very correctly; and Evelyn in his "Diary," under the date of 9th August, 1661, says, "I first saw the famous Queen Pine brought from Barbadoes, and presented to His Majesty (Charles II.); but the first that were ever seen in England were those sent to Cromwell four years since." Seven years subsequently, August 19th, 1668, Evelyn recorded, Standing by His Majesty at dinner there was of that rare fruit, called the King Pine, growing in Barbadoes and the West Indies, the first of them I had ever seen. Hie Majesty, having cut it up, was pleased to give me a piece off his own plate to taste of, but in my opinion it falls short of those ravishing varieties of deliciousness described in Capt. Ligon's history, and others; but possibly it might, or certainly was, much impaired in coming so far. It has yet a grateful acidity, but tastes more like the Quince and Melon than of any other fruit he mentions." 66 It may be that from the crowns of these that Rose succeeded in raising a fruit of the Pine Apple in this country. We say it may be, because there is a portrait in oil colours at Kensington Palace, representing Rose giving a Pine Apple to Charles II. Rose was then gardener to the Duchess of Cleveland, and the garden in which the present is being made was that of Dorney Court. Of that picture an engraving was made, and we now publish of it a copy. If Rose was sufficiently skilful, or so fortunate, as to ripen a Pine Apple in England, it became, seemingly, immediately afterwards a lost art, for neither Evelyn, London, Wise, Rea, nor Switzer speaks of it as an object of cultivation. Soon after Switzer ceased to publish, in 1732, its cultivation was successfully attempted in Holland. This was by M. Le Cour (or La Court, as written by Collinson), a wealthy Flemish merchant, who had an excellent garden at Drieoech, near Leyden, of which he published an account in 1732, and died in 1737. This garden was visited by Miller and Justice, who speak of its proprietor as one of the greatest encouragers of gardening in his time; of his having curious walls and hothouses; and they agree that he was the first person who succeeded in cultivating the Pine Apple. It was from him, Miller observes, that our gardeners were first supplied through Sir Matthew Decker. Pine Apple plants had been introduced into the Amsterdam gardens long previously, whither some of the plants were brought from the Dutch East India settlements, but more from their colonies at Surinam and Curaçoa in the West Indies. In 1712 the number of Pine plants thus collected amounted to about two hundred, but, though vigorous, they had not yet been brought to a fruit-bearing state. Mr. Le Cour, says Bradley, who was an eye-witness of these facts, was not discouraged by the ill-success of others. He built various stoves, and adopted different modes of treatment, until he at length succeeded in producing and ripening several hundred Pines annually; and the plants (suckers) increased so fast, that the gardener raised Mr. Bradley's wonder by telling him that hundreds were yearly thrown away. Though Mr. Le Cour succeeded in ripening Pines, we should not now say anything in commendation of the fruit he produced, since Bradley, speaking of the first, says "they were about 4 inches long." had declined below 85°, and in a few days it had risen to 120°; "I will try to describe the method of culture pursued here. We have a fruiting house, a similar house for succession, and a smaller house for suckers. All the houses are kept constantly full of plants. As the fruit ripens in the advanced house other plants are moved on to supply the places of the fruiting plants, a steady bottom heat being constantly main In 1718 the culture of the Pine Apple was for the first time established in England by Mr. H. Telende, gardener to Sir Matthew Decker at Richmond, in Surrey. In that year Mr. Bradley saw there forty fruiting plants, of which the smallest fruit was 4 inches, and the largest 7 inches in length. (Brad-tained in each house. ley's Gen. Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening, i., 209.) He planted the suckers in August, they bloomed in April, and the fruit was ripe in five months from the time of its first appearing. His pits, built of brickwork, required, for heating, three hundred bushels of bark, and he employed tepid water in sup- | plying the plants with moisture. Mr. Telende employed a thermometer, that he might be certain of the temperature he employed, and to this Mr. Bradley recommends the barometer and hygrometer to be added as guides for the gardener. Rose may have had this and other modes of heating at Dorney Court, for Evelyn, writing in 1685, mentions that in the Apothecary Company's garden, at Chelsea, there was a conservatory, in which the Jesuits'-bark tree and other rarities were grown, having heat beneath in a brick vault furnished by a stove, so that "the doores and windowes are open in the hardest frosts." In the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge is a landscape by Netcher, in which a Pine Apple is introduced, and this is there stated to be the first fruited in England, and that it was produced at Sir Matthew Decker's; but if the picture of Rose before noticed is correct, this is not strictly in accordance with facts. Unconscious of our intention of illustrating the history of this fruit, Mr. Douglas sent to us the following notes:"The Pine Apple may truly be designated the king of fruits. It generally heads the lists at the fruit shows, and holds the highest position on the dinner-table; but it is not my intention to write lengthily on its culture. I can well remember the mystery in which the culture of this fruit was shrouded to us young aspirants. It was to us the lion in the way; but with improved appliances and increased knowledge Pine culture is not at all difficult; indeed, it is easier to grow Pines than it is to grow winter Cucumbers or Grapes. A serious mistake which some growers still make is to grow the plants in pots out of all proportion too large; from 9 to 11 inches inside measure is sufficiently large, the small size being used for Queens and Jamaicas, and the larger size for Smooth-leaved Cayennes and Charlotte Rothschild. When such pots are used there will not be much difficulty in getting the plants to throw-up their fruit within twelve months from the time of putting in the suckers. "The beds in which the plants are plunged should be furnished with hot-water pipes for bottom heat, which will afford a much more equable temperature than depending solely on fermenting material. Refuse tan is the best medium to plunge in, and 20 inches a sufficient depth. A body of tan of this depth will heat, and continue at a sufficiently high temperature without using the heating apparatus for a considerable time afterwards. When the heat declines below the required standard the hot water can be turned on, and it is much better to trust to the hot-water pipes than it is to be frequently turning over the beds. It is always best to have a thermometer in use for testing the bottom heat, and when it declines below 85° it can easily be raised by the pipes underneath, so that by this means the beds can be kept at a nearly fixed temperature as readily as the internal atmosphere of the house. On the other hand, when the temperature is raised by turning and renewing the beds, the cultivator has little or no control over them. I have turned over a bed when the temperature "Potting and repotting the plants are very much easier operations than they used to be. As a general rule I put the suckers in 6 or 7-inch pots, according to their strength, and when these pots are well filled with roots the plants are shifted into the fruiting pots. I have said the pots should be well filled with roots, but the plants must not be potbound. The potting material in which the Pine succeeds best is undoubtedly good medium turfy loam, with a sixth part of rotted manure added to it, and a 9-inch potful of crushed bones to each barrowload of the compost. Place the potsherds carefully at the bottom of the pot; indeed, this last-named operation, though very often carelessly performed, is one of great importance, and it is equally important to use some means to prevent the loose mould from mixing with the crocks. After placing the pieces of broken pots in the bottom, put some rough fibrous material over them, and in potting the plants ram the compost in quite firmly with a wooden rammer. In general I do not water the plants until five or six days after the time of potting. They should be placed in a brisk bottom heat of say 95°, and in that time fresh rootlets will be formed, which will be ready to take up the water. This should be used of the same temperature as that of the soil in which the roots are growing. "It is highly important in Pine-growing, as well as in all other gardening operations, to attend carefully to the minor details. Watering, ventilating, and maintaining a sufficiently moist state of the atmosphere are the three principal elements of success. Water the plants only when they require it. It will be sufficient to look over the beds twice a-week. Use the water a little warm to correspond with the temperature of the beds, and when the fruiting pots are pretty well full of roots use weak manure water. Ventilating the houses should be done in a judicious manner; do not leave the house shut-up until the sun has been shining upon it for an hour or two. In summer open the ventilators at six o'clock in the morningjust a little at the highest part of the house; this will be the means of filling it with fresh air, and will not materially lower the temperature. The air-giving throughout the day must be regulated by the effect the sun has upon the glass roof. It is better to shut-up early in the afternoon, to retain the sun heat, than it is to raise the temperature afterwards by artificial heat. When the sun has passed the meridian, say between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, reduce the air, shutting-up altogether an hour or two later, according to the state of the weather or the season. I never syringe the Pines, but in summer a sufficient degree of atmospheric moisture is maintained by keeping the evaporating-troughs full of water, and by sprinkling the paths during the day. In winter no water should be in the evaporating-troughs, but water should be sprinkled about in the house twice a-day. Insufficient ventilation, and an atmosphere overcharged with moisture, are the prevailing causes of overgrown crowns, than which there is nothing more unsightly; not only does an overgrown crown detract from the appearance of the fruit, but it also seems to appropriate a considerable share of the nourishment which should have gone to swell-out the fruit. "I cannot enter into much detail about the best varieties to cultivate. If I were confined to only one sort I would grow Queens; if to two sorts, I would have the Smooth-leaved Cayenne. The first-named sort is well adapted for summer |